Tag Archives: India

The world economic, social and political map and consequent geographies of development are rapidly changing, as a result of such trends as the growing influence of rising powers and simultaneous forms of crisis in both global North and South.

Yet, among geographers, it can seem as if the study of development is often relatively separate to that of economic geography, which can be quite perplexing and challenging for postgraduate students and others keen to research at this interface.

In a recent paper in Area, I explore how this imbalance may be encountered and hopefully gradually overcome. Upon commencing my PhD research on India’s pharmaceutical industry, I initially focused on the economic characteristics of Indian pharmaceutical firms as emerging multinationals. However, I struggled to reconcile much of the conceptual work I was reading, initially in economic geography, with the empirical issues at hand.

Fieldwork beyond disciplinary boundaries

Particularly when conducting fieldwork in India and reading various India-published newspapers and journals (as well as some more development studies-oriented research), I was opened to a whole host of broader “development” debates around the industry – most notably around the public health issue of access to medicines. After my pilot fieldwork, I adapted my research to try to take a more inclusive focus:

Interviewing:

a wider range of small and medium-sized, as well as large, firms

civil society organisations as well as firms and policymakers

Asking a broader range of questions, going beyond firm-level concerns to a greater interest in access to medicines issues

A small-scale pharmaceutical company in Delhi (image credit: Rory Horner)

Particularly for those at an early career stage who are perhaps less embedded in prior research divisions, fieldwork, and engagement with various stakeholders, can provide relative freedom from academic boundaries and be a crucial stage for challenging sub-disciplinary boundaries.

Richer geographies of development?

Ultimately, the scope of my PhD research shifted from understanding a growth industry, and its industrial reorganisation internationally, to research about global governance, specifically changing patent laws, the role of the state and development impacts. By playing a crucial role in the global access to medicines campaign and in contesting a Northern agenda on pharmaceutical patent laws. the Indian pharmaceutical industry has had global significance in a social as well as an economic context. Any analysis to separate the ‘economic’ aspects of the industry from the broader ‘development’ dimensions involving health would have been incomplete.

The possibilities of any scholar being completely free of sub-disciplinary boundaries is doubtful, and some research may have greater resonance with one “side” (for me, with economic geography). Yet if we are to better understand major development debates that cross the economic, social and political, such as access to medicines issues in India as featured in a 2013 New York Times article, we need more integrated approaches. By engaging with the dynamics of extensive fieldwork and the integrated nature of social and economic development, a new generation of researchers can play a crucial role in breaking down the divides between the “economic” and “non-economic”, in geography and related fields, and ultimately produce richer geographies of development.

Recommendations for postgraduate students seeking to cross (sub-) disciplinary boundaries

As pupils, teachers, and parents head into the final weeks preceding the winter holiday, education remains a perennial and hotly debated issue. In the last week alone, Education Secretary Michael Gove urged Lancashire primary schools to increase their standards and testing results, commentators discussed raising university fees on the Isle of Man and, while on a trip to India, Boris Johnson railed against declining numbers of foreign students attending British universities. These stories come on the heels of several years of upheaval in the British education system – ranging from the introduction of high tuition fees to reforms in primary and secondary care.

In the most recent Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, Sarah L Holloway and Heike Jöns (Loughborough University) headlined a thematic issue focusing on changing geographies of education. The articles, as well as Holloway and Jöns’s summarisation, featured at the Second International Conference on Geographies of Education, held 10-11 September 2012 at Loughborough University, and presently form a 14-article ‘virtual issue’.

The authors begin their analysis with a discussion of the vital role states play in the successful implementation of educational policy at every level, from ensuring that regions meet appropriate national testing regulations, to provide local medical, nursery, and food assistance. In so doing, they highlight at least two key, but uneasy partnerships: the state and parents; and the balance between public and private responsibilities. These balances appear to be in nearly constant flux; demanding education reform that’s attune to the needs of different constituencies.

Sociologists and geographers of education are increasingly cognizant of the rapidly changing nature of education itself or, as the authors concisely described, ‘[W]hat is learnt’ (483). Several important themes are highlighted: interdisciplinary studies; the importance of informal education, or education that does not take place within the traditional classroom (e.g., field trips, active citizenship and volunteering); introduction to and engaging in national and international issues, and conceptualising different ‘spaces of learning’ that can be tailored to maximise opportunities in various environments (484-86). Geographers of education must also engage with the ‘complex networks’ and the ‘diverse flows of knowledge, information, capital and resources’ that are becoming increasingly global in the age of internet communications. As a final call to action, both authors suggest that British debates on education geography and policy engage with non-British sources, incorporating ideas and priorities from the Americas, South Asia, the Middle East, and Africa.

Recently, the airline manufacturer Airbus has been catching my eye via online and printed advertisements, and also through the news. The world’s largest passenger airliner, the A380, was on display at the Farnborough Airshow last week, and yesterday my neighbour was even wearing an Airbus cap purchased after a tour around the assembly plant in Toulouse.

Airbus is a consortium formed by national aerospace companies in France, Germany, the United Kingdom and Spain. With headquarters and assembly point in Toulouse, Airbus also has assembly lines in Hamburg, and Tianjin (China), and various subsidiary companies in the US, India and Japan. Recently, Airbus made headlines with the announcement that it will establish an assembly line in Mobile, Alabama (the company’s first US-based production facility). Airbus President and CEO confirmed this as a positive move that will create much needed jobs, and enhance Airbus’ global competitiveness. An alternative view expressed by European labour force unions can be read in the Telegraph.

Jumping from global companies to small-scale rural economies in the developing world, Carswell (2012) presents research on local labour markets in rural India. Carswell explores how labour markets are locally constituted and segmented by comparing the differences between two villages separated by only a few miles. She examines the range of job opportunities available to people in the two villages, and how belonging to different social groups influences these opportunities. The findings reveal the ways in which labour market segmentation is complex and beyond the assumption that it might be simply caste-based. Carswell argues that “having an industry on your doorstep means very different things for different people” – a sentiment that is also borne out in reports on the Airbus expansion.

A month ago, the UK media reported on findings from the Trust Law Danger Poll (213 gender experts from five continents were asked to rank countries by overall perceptions of danger as well as by six risks. The risks were health threats, sexual violence, non-sexual violence, cultural or religious factors, lack of access to resources and trafficking) highlighting the world’s five most dangerous countries for women. Afghanistan topped the poll, emerging worst in three of the six risk catgories, followed by Congo, Pakistan, India and Somalia. Threats to women in these countries range from domestic abuse and economic discrimination to female foeticide, genital mutilation and acid attacks. The Telegraph reported Antonella Notari, head of Women Change Makers, a group that supports women social entrepreneurs around the world as saying that “ongoing conflict, Nato airstrikes and cultural practices combined make Afghanistan a very dangerous place for women.”

Chatterjee (2011) discusses how local conflict may be influenced by processes of globalisation and argues that in order to understand how globalisation may be implicated in local violent events, it is essential to develop a nuanced understanding of the complexities of global–local interaction in places. The case study used was of a Hindu-Muslim conflict which happened in 2002 in Ahmedabad city, India. Although Chatterjee’s article does not directly discuss gender explicitly, it is a useful article to read to grasp a better understanding of how dangers to women can manifest within particular countries and cultures.

The Telegraph highlighted how ‘the poll showed that subtle dangers such as discrimination that don’t grab headlines are sometimes just as significant risks for women as bombs, bullets, stonings and systematic rape in conflict zones’. These subtle dangers are seemingly less headline grabbing than violent outbursts but very much underpin the everyday lives of women in these countries. For example 87% of Aghan women are illiterate, in Congo 57% of pregnant women are anaemic, in Pakistan women earn 82% less than men, in India 44.5% of women are married before they are 18 years of age and in Somalia only 9% of women give birth in a health facility. These statistics truly make the countries in the Danger Poll dangerous to women because of their ingrained nature.